Johnny Kaplan RIP

Johnny Kaplan died Friday morning. It was not totally unexpected, though it did come fast in the end. He had been battling cancer for awhile.

I met Johnny through a co-worker. They were part of a pack of SUNY Buffalo anarchist artist types who all moved to San Francisco in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s. Almost all were Jews and jactitation and I spent pretty much every Jewish holiday with their crowd after we realized we liked each other and there wasn’t much g-d mixed into their Jewishness. I loved being a part of it even if some years I had to ask the stupid questions during Passover (when anarqueso or the occasional child wasn't there). At least it made me feel young.

Johnny’s art is amazing, I just wish there was more of it. I wish I could find something online to link because it defies description. Intricate tableaus built inside common objects. Amazing detail and depth. Things you could look at for hours, sturdy on the outside precise and fragile inside, sometimes with moving parts. I can only imagine what he could have created in a society that supports artists and if he didn’t have to work stupid jobs to survive, especially as this city got more and more crazy expensive.

I last saw him about three weeks ago in the Geary/Divis doctor district. I was going to see my doctor about my tendonitis, he was leaving his doctor’s office. We hugged. He felt frail in his puffy jacket. We talked about what movies we would watch together and made plans for the following week. Unfortunately, when I called to confirm he wasn’t up to visitors.

At the informal gathering yesterday, I got to see pictures of Johnny in a headless panda suit from around Thanksgiving. They totally captured his sense of humor: Johnny the Panda "hiding" in a potted bamboo plant, Johnny the Panda playing baseball, Johnny the Panda cooking food, Johnny the Panda fake pooping. Thankfully the gathering also reflected his humor, being filled with New York atheist Jews who, in my anecdotal dealings with death so far, are my favorite mourners. If a story is funny enough, they don’t mind laughing on the day of a friend’s death, at least in these circumstances where we all knew it was coming.

Johnny and I were never close. If we had managed to hang out in the last few weeks it probably would have been the first time we socialized without other people, but he was a part of my community of people and it already feels smaller without him. And it was his community that cared for him in the end, making sure his rent was paid, that he had company when he wanted it, that he got regular massages, that he had food in the house. No one wanted to see him disappear in his sickness, something fairly easy to do in this society if you don’t have a partner or close family.

Over the years, unfortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to write about the death of friends. Many of you have told me you were especially moved by some of those pieces. I understand that partly that is the subject matter alone and another part of it is the impulse that any decent person has to comfort the afflicted. Still, I do think that the hyper-nostalgic way I deal with the world makes me well suited for obituary writing, though I don’t find these entries to be any great work of art. I do feel like it’s my duty to publicly remember my people.

In this case though, if you know jactitation,understand that she and Johnny were much closer than Johnny and I were. You might wanna send your kind words her way instead of mine.

Also, another member of my extended community, though more of an acquaintance to me than Johnny was, is also battling cancer. It seems appropriate to mention that there is a benefit for Heather McCallister of the Big Bottom Revue coming up on 1/14. Details can be found here.

community

You all should check out anarqueso's post today. She was another friend of Johnny's. In this post she's musing about and asking on the nature of community.